Everything Earl Grant, Donald Hand Jr. & Jayden Hastings said during ACC Tipoff Press Conference

While football flounders, the men’s basketball team is setting some lofty expectations for itself heading into the 2025-2026 season.

Head coach Earl Grant, Donald Hand Jr. and Jayden Hastings represented the Eagles early on Wednesday morning at the ACC Tipoff press conference. Here’s everything they had to say:

Grant opening statement

“Thankful to be here. Thankful to have these two young men Donald Hand and Jayden Hastings with me. We’re really excited about this season. We feel like we have a great team, great leadership. We’re experienced. Excited to tipoff a new season, ’25-’26 in the ACC, which we feel is the best college basketball league there is. Very thankful to be here and just excited, happy for these young men. They’ve worked so hard to put themselves in position to be here on a day like this. We feel really great about our team and looking forward to the season.”

Grant on adding guys in the portal & retaining players

“Well, it starts with these guys here. We retained half of our roster, which was very critical for us because we feel like we do a good job identifying young men that could really compete in the ACC, but also are great students and have great character. Once we get them on campus, if we can keep them, they’re going to develop and they’re going to become special. I think it starts with the retention, it’s more important than the transfer portal. To have six of our players from last year return and five of those six all played significant minutes, it’s very exciting.

“We needed some help and so, we went into the portal. We were prepared for the portal. We knew exactly what we were looking for. We got bigger, longer and more athletic and more experience out of the portal. Certainly Boden Kapke coming from Butler, being a third year player, played in the Big East. He’s 6’11,” 255lbs. A really good player, budding, ready to break out. Aidan Shaw was at Missouri. He’s seen a little bit of everything. He’s been to the NCAA tournament, been through a year where they didn’t win any games in the SEC, so he’s got a lot of experience. He’s a great person, one of the better athletes on our team at 6’9.” Jason Asemota came from Baylor. 6’9″ wing, a really good player that’s going to flourish eventually. Chase Forte is from South Dakota. I think in the portal we did great. We had great freshmen come in, our freshmen really want to be at BC. They’re special players and special people. I really like our roster.”

Grant on Chase Forte and why BC wanted him

“The last transfer that came out of South Dakota went to Texas Tech and they went to the Final Four. He was a guard. I think with Chase, we were looking for leadership. We were looking for experience. We were looking for a good-character guy, somebody that was a worker, that had toughness, that fit our DNA at BC…we thought Chase fit all those things we were looking for. He’s from North Carolina, so the ACC meant something to him. He really wanted to be at BC, he’s getting a Masters degree. But, he won. He won DPOY in his league. He won. He averaged 18 points. He averaged 25 points the last five games of the year. He’s very capable of scoring, but he really wants to facilitate and serve and be a point guard and assist his teammates. He’s capable of scoring, a great defender and a big, physical, athletic guy.”

Grant on what he wants the identity to be

“I think most of my time at BC has been great. We just been climbing towards the top. Every year we’ve gotten better. We’ve won. We were very good in the ACC tournament. We got to the postseason. We had big wins in the ACC tournament. So, everything was upward mobility. The only year that wasn’t was last year. Which, no big deal. We understood. It’s a negative and a positive. We lost players going into year four, really good players, four starters. But, if we didn’t lose them, maybe these guys don’t flourish they did, maybe they don’t play as much. So, them playing a lot last year, even though the season didn’t go the way we wanted it to go – we had about six OT games – they’re ready now. I think that year was actually a part of setting us up to have a good season this year.”

Grant on 3-point shooting this season

“We want to shoot about 12% more this year. We’ve got better shooting. We’ve got more guys that can make them. So, we’re going to make that an emphasis. We want to shoot good threes. So, obviously we’ve got to get the ball inside, whether it be post feeds or driving it into the paint to get the defense to collapse. We’ve got to work on finding ways to get more quality threes, but I’m glad you brought it up. We did shoot 28-29%, we want to be at 40% of our attempts coming from three. I think we have a very dangerous team that way and we going to really try to figure out how to get more three point shots.”

Hand Jr. on how Chase Forte will open up his game

“It’s going to help a lot. He’s very experienced. He led South Dakota to some big victories last year. We’ve been watching film together. In practice, we gel really well together, so this year should be really fun. We know how each other plays. He knows my spots, I know his spots. I’m looking forward to it.”

Hand Jr. on where he believes BC culture is and where it’s heading

“It’s trending to the top. I still believe that. Me and Coach Grant talked about this a couple of times. I truly believe this is our breakout year right here. Last week, I was at church and the pastor said ‘the storm doesn’t last forever.’ Last year, a lot of people seen it as a storm and it wasn’t a storm. It was me, Fred, Jayden’s first time in that position. Now, we know how it feels to be in big games. We know how it feels to be in tight games and this year, it will be a different outcome because we know how it feels. This is our breakout year. I’ll say it right here: we’re going to be Top 5 in the ACC. I say it confidently.”

Hand Jr. on why the team is confident in Earl Grant

“It helps build my confidence tremendously. Coach always preaches confidence to his guys and says ‘if you work on it, I’ll never question the shot you take.’ He trusts his guys. Everyone he recruits he trusts. He’s a man of faith. Our whole team is big on faith and when you have faith in God and you have a great man like Coach Grant, it makes it so simple to go out there and just play basketball. I can confidently say this is one of the best coaches in America. We can’t wait to show the world what we can do this year.”

Hastings on what he worked on in the offseason to improve

“Just maximizing my gifts and talents. Defensively, guarding guards and being able to be stronger in the paint. Offensively, just keep working on my post game, just maximizing my role, working on lobs and just being the best me I can be.”

Hastings on this year being a breakout season for BC

“I think everything that’s good takes time. I think we’ve had the time to work through the bumps and bruises. I think we know what we want from each other. We know what we want to achieve. This is the breakout year. This is the year we can just put our head down and grind and get to the Top 5 that DJ said.”

Hastings on his energy off the court

“I remember an AAU coach told me your attitude should be like you’re the worst player on the team, so it’s nothing on the court but bringing energy and it’s about making your teammates smile. It’s about helping your teammates make the next play after they mess up. It’s about having the attitude as if basketball doesn’t matter, it’s about the intangibles.”

Hastings on how he makes teammates smile

“Honestly, I just look at them and they start laughing. We crack jokes all the time. They’re like my brothers, so anything and everything we do we’re always laughing.”